Ad Man Fired

The creator of the Big Brother Hillary ad has been found out and fired for his efforts.

Don't feel bad for the guy, though. This kind of talent will find a home somewhere in politics. I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary doesn't hire him herself.

RLC

Unspeakable Depravity

These are the people Michael Moore once referred to as Iraq's version of the American Minutemen:

Insurgents in Iraq detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle with two children in the back seat after US soldiers let it through a Baghdad checkpoint over the weekend, a senior US military official said Tuesday.

The vehicle was stopped at the checkpoint but was allowed through when soldiers saw the children in the back, said Major General Michael Barbero of the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

"Children in the back seat lowered suspicion. We let it move through. They parked the vehicle, and the adults ran out and detonated it with the children in the back," Barbero said.

After going through the checkpoint, the vehicle parked next to a market across the street from a school, said the official, who asked not to be identified.

"And the two adults were seen to get out of the vehicle, and run from the vehicle, and then followed by the detonation of the vehicle," the official said.

"It killed the two children inside as well as three other civilians in the vicinity. So, a total of five killed, seven injured," the official said.

Officials here said they did not know who the children were or their relationship to the two adults who fled the scene. They had no information about their ages or genders.

Here are Moore's exact words: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?"

One thing we all "get" is that, given the facts about the sort of people we're dealing with in Iraq and elsewhere, Michael Moore is either a very uninformed man or he is morally comatose. Yet this is a man whom the left lionizes. It says, I suppose, something important about their standards.

RLC

Five for One?

Philosopher Peter Singer has an essay in The Guardian in which he poses a pair of ethical dilemmas, the responses to which are being studied by some Harvard post-docs:

...you are standing by a railroad track when you notice that a trolley, with no one aboard, is heading for a group of five people. They will all be killed if it continues on its current track. The only thing you can do to prevent these five deaths is to throw a switch that will divert the trolley on to a side track, where it will kill only one person. When asked what you should do in these circumstances, most people say you should divert the trolley on to the side track, thus saving a net four lives.

In another dilemma, the trolley is about to kill five people. This time, you are standing on a footbridge above the track. You cannot divert the trolley. You consider jumping off the bridge, in front of the trolley, thus sacrificing yourself to save the people in danger, but you realise you are too light to stop the trolley. Standing next to you is a very large stranger. The only way you can prevent the trolley from killing five people is by pushing this stranger off the bridge into the path of the trolley. He will be killed, but you will save the other five. When asked what you should do in these circumstances, most people say that it would be wrong to push the stranger.

Why do most people think it right to divert the trolley but not to push the stranger in front of the trolley? It's an interesting question and Singer speculates on some possible evolutionary explanations which unfortunately don't sound very persuasive.

More interesting to me is the question of whether we ever have the right to kill an innocent person who is no threat to ourselves, even if it saves more lives. This is a no-brainer for a utilitarian, perhaps, who would doubtless answer that the right act is always the act that produces the greatest net good (i.e. happiness). In these cases the greatest good would be saving the most lives, but for one whose ethics are grounded in the Gospels it's much more complicated and perplexing.

I'd be interested in your thoughts on this.

RLC

Crawley and Dawkins (Pt. II)

In his interview with William Crawley, Richard Dawkins offers three counter-arguments to the claim that the extraordinary fine-tuning of the universe points to a cosmic designer.

Dawkins asks first where such a designer comes from. If a designer (let's say God) designed the universe, in other words, then what designed God? Dawkins holds elsewhere that if the extraordinary complexity of the universe makes the universe's existence highly improbable then the designer of the universe, which must be even more complex, must be even more improbable, in fact vanishingly so. So improbable must the desiger be that one is not rationally justified in believing it exists.

We have addressed this argument in a previous post and found it to be very unpersuasive.

His second counter-argument, which he conflates with the third in the interview but which is really a distinct argument, is what is called the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP). It says that we should not think it so very special that the universe is as it is for were it not we would not be around to notice it. The fact that we exist means that the universe must be tuned precisely as it is.

Well, yes, but this misses the point. The question is whether the fine-tuning is a dumbfounding coincidence or whether it is intentional. Using the WAP as a counter-argument to the cosmic fine-tuning problem has been compared to the scenario where a man finds himself kidnapped and imprisoned by a psychopathic killer. The kidnapper has placed in the prison cell one hundred machines which are designed to simultaneously dispense a single playing card when a button is pushed. The kidnapper then tells his victim that when he pushes the button each of the one hundred machines wil produce a card at random from a deck that has been shuffled inside the machine. If any machine produces any card other than an ace of spades the prisoner will be automatically gassed and instantly killed.

The kidnap victim despairs of his chances of survival. They seem infinitely slim. The button is pushed. The victim tenses. And nothing happens. No gas. He looks at the machines and every one of them has produced an ace of spades. The man is astonished at his good fortune. How could it be that he is alive? Professor Dawkins would tell him that he shouldn't be astonished that each machine produced the correct card because had it not he wouldn't be alive to to take note of the fact.

This seems like a dodge, and it is. The prisoner has every right to wonder how such an improbable course of events could have unfolded to allow him to survive. He has every reason to suspect that the machines weren't selecting cards at random at all, but that the outcome was intentionally foreordained.

Sensing, perhaps, the absurdity of a resort to the WAP, Dawkins quickly imports a completely unscientific, non-empirical speculative hypothesis called the Multiverse theory. According to this, our universe is just one of an innumerable array of universes each having different parameters, values and laws. Given the existence of so many worlds, the chances are greatly increased that at least one world would be structured the way ours is. Think of it this way: The chances that somebody is going to be holding the winning lottery ticket increase as the number of tickets sold increases. Thus we shouldn't be astonished that our universe is tuned as precisely as it is because, given the number of worlds, at least one has to be suitable for life, and ours is it.

This might be an effective response to cosmic fine-tuning were there any shred of evidence that any other worlds exist, much more a vast number of them, but there is none. The theory is pure speculation invoked for no good reason other than to enable one to avoid the conclusion that our universe is intentionally designed.

Moreover, since the idea of multiple worlds is untestable, it's not a scientific theory. It also violates the principle of Occam's Razor which tells us that the simplest explanation that accounts for the facts is the best (a plenitude of worlds is far more complicated an explanation than the hypothesis that there's just one world plus a designer of that world), nor does it explain where the universes all come from and what creates them.

We have proof, of course, that information, beauty, harmony, etc. can be produced by a mind, but we have no proof that they can be produced by random chance. Yet, in order to evade the force of the evidence posed by the exquisite fine-tuning of the cosmos, we are asked to accept that chance has produced zillions of worlds, one of which has beauty, elegance, and law-like order.

To be sure, Dawkins could be correct. It's possible that the world is one of an immeasurable number of universes, but why believe that unless one is so dead set against the idea that there's a mind superintending it all that one will believe almost anything to escape having to believe that such a mind exists.

Part I of our discussion of this interview can be found here.

RLC

Something for Everyone

Senator Clinton has her bases covered:

RLC

Kurt G�del

Students of math and science among our readers will probably have heard of Kurt G�del, one of the premier mathematicians and logicians of the 20th century. G�del was brilliant. It also turns out that he was a committed theist. Hector Rosario has an interesting article on G�del's theism at Metanexus. Here's a part of it:

Kurt G�del, the preeminent mathematical logician of the twentieth century, is best known for his celebrated Incompleteness Theorems; yet he also had a profound rational theology worthy of serious consideration. "The world is rational," asserted G�del, evoking philosophical theism, "according to which the order of the world reflects the order of the supreme mind governing it."

G�del was a self-confessed theist, going as far as developing an ontological argument in an attempt to prove the existence of God. He chose the framework of modal logic, a useful formal language for proof theory, which also has important applications in computer science. This logic is the study of the deductive behavior of the expressions 'it is necessary that' and 'it is possible that,' which arise frequently in ordinary (philosophical) language. However, according to his biographer John Dawson, he never published his ontological argument for fear of ridicule by his peers.

An important aspect of G�del's theology - one that has been greatly overlooked by those studying his works - is that not only was he a theist but a personalist; not a pantheist as some apologetic thinkers may portray him. To be precise, he rejected the notion that God was impersonal, as God was for Einstein.

"Spinoza's god is less than a person; mine is more than a person; because God can play the role of a person." This is significant since a god who lacks the ability to "play the role of a person" would obviously lack the property of omnipotence and thus violate a defining property universally accepted as pertaining to God. Therefore if God existed, reasoned G�del, then He must at least be able to play the role of a person. The question for G�del was how to determine the truth value of the antecedent in the previous statement.

Atheists and agnostics usually portray their philosophy as rational, discarding the theist conclusion as a mere psychological refuge of the ignorant or self-deceiving. Nevertheless, ultra-rational thinkers like G�del, Leibniz, and Descartes have reached the theist conclusion. Is there an apparent disconnect between rational thinkers and rational thought, or is it that the theists' view is the rational conclusion, even if often embraced by fanatics in unimaginably irrational ways?

Many scientists would argue that even though they cannot completely (or partially) explain the origin of the universe - or the origin of life, or the nature of consciousness, or the nature of time - the answers would certainly not involve God. They have placed their faith in their cognitive processes and in their colleagues. They submit to those authorities; but faith they have, nonetheless.

Rosario concludes the article with a discussion of G�del's version of the ontological argument.

HT: Telic Thoughts

RLC

The Ugliness of American Politics

American politics has grown exceedingly ugly in the last ten years or so. It is no longer, if it ever was, a contest of ideas about how best to achieve mutually agreed upon ends. It has morphed into a battle to destroy the other side, to destroy as many careers as possible and discredit the other side to whatever extent one can.

Thus we find ourselves mired in perpetual charges of scandal: We are told that the administration lied to get us into war, that the administration illegally eaves-drops on our enemies, that the administration illegally detains enemy combatants, that prisons like Guantanamo Bay are hell-holes, that our troops are less than ideally equipped and outfitted for their mission, that Dick Cheney didn't immediately report a hunting accident, that a CIA agent was illegally "outed" for political reasons, and the current outrage du jour, that federal district attorneys were improperly dismissed.

None of these are genuine scandals. In each case the charges are either trivial, untrue or, if true, there was nothing illegal or improper in the administration's actions. Yet the Democrats and their media mouthpieces daily demand human sacrifice: Destroy Don Rumsfeld. Hang Scooter Libby. Get Karl Rove. Ruin Dick Cheney. Impeach George Bush. It's a mob mentality based on hate and deceit, driven by a lust for power, and it's destroying our politics and paralyzing governance.

Not that there are not genuine scandals in this White House, but the real scandals are ones in which the Democrats are complicit. The biggest is Bush's feckless approach to securing our borders and stopping illegal immigration. His insouciance about this problem is a dereliction of his duty as commander in chief and is negating, in the minds of many Americans, much of the good he has wrought.

The good includes his liberation of more people from tyranny than any other president in history, his steadfastness in the war on terror, the appointment of quality Supreme Court and federal jurists, tax cuts which have given us one of the best economies in the last sixty years, and his resolve to stay the course in the war on terrorism despite the howling and shrieking of his enemies both foreign and domestic.

Bush could have been a great president. Despite the tragic mistakes that were made in the post-invasion phase of the Iraq war, he could have emerged from his tenure in the White House with Reaganesque stature, but his handling of illegal immigration is a disgrace that will be very difficult for him to overcome no matter what happens in Iraq. His failure is sad for what it will do to his legacy, and it could well be calamitous for the country.

RLC

Socs Rocks

Any teacher who has ever been evaluated by his or her students will find much that sounds familiar in these student evaluations of Socrates' teaching abilities.

HT: No Left Turns

RLC

1984 in 2008

Goodness. Somebody on the Democrat side has put together an anti-Hillary ad that, in terms of political image-making and propaganda, is just devastating. It plays off of George Orwell's vision of mind-numbed, lobotomized citizens forced to watch a droning Big Brother on a large theater screen.

Obama denies any connection to the ad even though the tag line implicates his supporters.

Watch it here.

RLC

A Different Perspective

This news will not be welcome in many ideological quarters of the nation but it seems as if things are not as bad in Iraq as the administration critics in Congress and the media keep telling us they are:

Most Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a British opinion poll published today.

The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their suffering in sectarian violence since the American-led invasion four years ago this week.

One in four Iraqis has had a family member murdered, says the poll by Opinion Research Business. In Baghdad, the capital, one in four has had a relative kidnapped and one in three said members of their family had fled abroad. But when asked whether they preferred life under Saddam, the dictator who was executed last December, or under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, most replied that things were better for them today.

Only 27% think there is a civil war in Iraq, compared with 61% who do not, according to the survey carried out last month.

By a majority of two to one, Iraqis believe military operations now under way will disarm all militias. More than half say security will improve after a withdrawal of multinational forces.

Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, said the findings pointed to progress. "There is no widespread violence in the four southern provinces and the fact that the picture is more complex than the stereotype usually portrayed is reflected in today's poll," she said.

And here we thought the whole country was in flames, chaos and confusion just as John Murtha and Chris Matthews have been telling us. Wonder what they'll say now.

RLC

NAE on Torture (Pt. II)

With this post we continue our examination of the National Association of Evangelicals' statement on torture. See here for Part I of this critique.

The NAE takes the position that torture, or any treatment which degrades another human being, is categorically wrong. It is our position at Viewpoint, however, that while torture is grossly immoral to the point of evil when used as a means of punishment or revenge, or almost always when used in interrogating prisoners, or when done simply to entertain and amuse the torturers, as apparently was the case at Abu Ghraib, there are nevertheless circumstances in which torture is not only not wrong, but morally incumbent. Indeed, the NEA drafters admit as much, albeit inadvertantly, when they write that:

Human rights are not first of all about "my rights," but about the rights of the vulnerable and the violated. And they are about responsibility, indeed obligation, to defend the weak. All people, all societies, and all nations have a responsibility to ensure human rights.

This is certainly true, but the weak and vulnerable are often the intended victims of brutes and thugs. If in order to carry out our mandate to defend the weak and vulnerable we find that the only way to keep them from harm is to use coercive force against someone who has information that would save the victims, whose rights, those of the victim or those of their would-be killers, should we regard as paramount? Just as in the case of a policeman defending himself or a bystander from an aggressor, when someone is an active (or a passive threat) to another their right not to be harmed is no longer in effect.

Consider the case of a terrorist named Rauf, captured last August by the Pakistanis. It was information obtained from interrogating Mr. Rauf that uncovered the plot to simultaneously blow up ten airliners last summer using liquid bombs. Suppose now the following circumstances obtained at the time: The authorities knew that something terrible was in the works and that Mr. Rauf knew what it was. Imagine, too, that Mr. Rauf could not be enticed to yield his knowledge of the plot through any means other than being subjected to pain, fear, or humiliating treatment. Finally, imagine that your spouse and children would have been aboard one of those planes. Would you maintain that, these hypotheticals notwithstanding, if you had your way the Pakistani intelligence service would not have been permitted to employ the methods they apparently did employ to persuade Mr. Rauf to talk? A simple yes or no will suffice.

If you answered yes, try this: Imagine looking your loved ones directly in the eyes and telling them that.

Or consider a case similar to that of John Couey who kidnapped nine year old Jessica Lunsford, tortured and raped her, and then buried her alive and left her to die. A similar crime occured in Florida some years ago where the victim was buried in a box that had enough air to allow her to live for about a day. Suppose, counterfactually, that the kidnapper had been apprehended, admitted that he had abducted the girl, told the police that she was in the box with only a few hours left to live, but he refused to tell them where she was.

Suppose further that the girl is your daughter. Finally, suppose that one cop, against all regulations, applies excruciating coercion against the kidnapper until he yields the information, resulting in the rescue of your daughter. Subsequently, you discover how her rescue was achieved. Would you register disapproval with the authorities? Would you insist that the cop be prosecuted for his violation of the rights of the kidnapper? Would you feel that the police officer's act was morally inexcusable or repugnant?

If not, then you do not agree with this statement in the NAE document:

Human rights apply to all humans. The rights people have are theirs by virtue of being human, made in God's image. Persons can never be stripped of their humanity, regardless of their actions or of others' actions toward them. In social contract theory human rights are called unalienable rights. Unalienable rights are absolute and completely inviolable; a person cannot legitimately cease to have those rights, whether through waiver, fault, or another's act.

As we suggested in part one this is a very bad argument. What are these unalienable rights? Surely they include the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But if these rights are unalienable, as the NAE insists, then not only is it always and everywhere wrong for policemen and soldiers to use deadly force, it is also wrong to incarcerate criminals. If one were to protest that criminals and enemy combatants forfeit their rights, at least so long as they are a threat to soldiers, police officers or to society, then it is being conceded that the rights in question are not "unalienable." They are rights we possess as human beings until such time as we become a threat to the welfare of others.

The NAE continues:

An expansive approach argues that there are three dimensions of human rights, and all must be equally valued by any society that respects any of them: the right to certain freedoms, especially including religious liberty, the right to participate in community, and the right to have basic needs met.

But surely the NAE understands that these are prima facie rights. That is, a person has them until such time as they become a threat to society or otherwise disqualify themselves from possessing them. A man whose religion calls for him to behead infidels, for example, surely does not have the right to practice his religion freely.

The NAE document also says this:

Human life is expressed through physicality, and the well-being of persons is tied to their physical existence. Therefore, humans must have the right to security of person. This includes the right not to have one's life taken unjustly (equivalent to the right to life), ...

Now the NAE is contradicting itself. Having declared human rights to be absolute they set out in this statement to qualify them. Apparently a just taking of a life is permitted by the NAE, but if so, why could not similar qualifications be imposed on the following:

...the right not to have one's body mutilated, and the right not to be abused, maimed, tortured, molested, or starved (sometimes called the right to bodily integrity or the right to remain whole). The right not to be arbitrarily detained (an aspect of due process) and the writ of habeus corpus are also based specifically on the concept of bodily rights. In particular, the writ of habeus corpus is based on the right not to have the government arbitrarily detain one's body.

It is acceptable, in fact obligatory, for the state to detain people, deprive them of their right to freedom, as long as it is not "arbitrary," but then what is happening to the absolute proscriptions that the NAE insisted upon earlier on. In other words, no right is unalienable or absolute. Whether someone can be deprived of life or freedom or any other property depends upon why these things are taken from the person. The NAE, however, disagrees:

Even when a person has done wrong, poses a threat, or has information necessary to prevent a terrorist attack, he or she is still a human being made in God's image, still a person of immeasurable worth.

Perhaps, but so are the people whose lives and well-being hang in the balance. Why should the terrorist's life be regarded as of greater worth than theirs? Why should the terrorist's rights count more heavily than the rights of your family aboard that plane or your nine-year old daughter suffocating in that box? If subjecting the terrorist to harsh treatment offers the only possibility of saving innocent lives it is morally incumbent upon us to do that. To stand by and do nothing when we could possibly have saved peoples' lives is immoral.

It is also absurd. If the terrorist succeeds, even though he's in custody, and innocent lives are lost, he can be executed according to the NAE's reasoning. But until he succeeds he cannot be in any way treated harshly even though it is reasonably certain that apart from harsh measures he will cause the murders of innocents and consequently be put to death. It's better to allow the innocents to die and their killer to be executed, according to the NAE's logic, than to prevent all that death by causing the murderer to suffer temporary discomfort or pain. It's hard to see how this makes any sense at all.

More on the NAE's argument later.

RLC

Question On Prayer

Consider for a moment these passages from the Gospels where Jesus offers assurance in no uncertain terms that prayer will be answered...

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6:6

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Matthew 7:7-8

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
Matthew 7:9-11

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
Luke 11:13

Therefore I say unto you, All things whatsoever ye pray and ask for, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
Mark 11:24

Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Mark 11:22-23

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
Matthew 17:20

Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 18:19

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall be do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
John 14:12-14

Yet is there anyone who can honestly say that they experience such reliability and consistency of God granting that which they ask for? And if not, then why not? There are too many passages to support the belief and expectation that God will, in fact, answer prayer as promised.

I can think of two possible answers and there certainly may be others. First, it may be that the Gospels and perhaps the book of Acts belong to a different dispensation than the one we are living in now. Just as the Old Testament or Old Covenant is a different dispensation, a dispensation of the law which has been superceded by the New Testament or New Covenant - a dispensation of grace. If this is the case, then the passages above applied specifically to those Jesus spoke to and not to future generations of believers. This would explain why I don't move mountains.

While this may be the case, I'm reluctant to believe it is so as otherwise I'm hard pressed to understand the point of prayer for contemporary believers including Paul and his exhortation and example as found in the epistles (also belonging to the present dispensation). The second possibility is that there is a relationship that exists between the degree of one's spirituality, that is, the degree to which they are indwelled by the Holy Spirit and, as a result, the faith they possess, and the reality of God answering their prayers. Interestingly, I believe we are blessed with the presence of the Holy Spirit through sincere and constant prayer to the Father in a total, selfless desire to be possessed by His Spirit.

If this is so, then I suspect such individuals, rare though they may be, are so in tune with the will of God that the passages above are a reality for them. Less blessed folk simply wouldn't recognize it. But even this thought seems to be contradicted by the first verse quoted above from Matthew 6:6

Of course, if any of our readers have another answer to this question, feel free to respond via the Feedback page.

The Pursuit of Truth

Henry Waxman personifies the dispassionate search for truth in his polite and probing questioning of the woman who wrote the law concerning what constitutes "outing" covert agents. When the witness responds to his questions the congressman takes the opportunity to sit back and learn and to let the nation be edified by the witness' expertise ....

Okay, I'm fantasizing. Check out the video for yourself at HotAir.

RLC

Cheney Variant of BDS

Someone named Michelle Cottle at The New Republic argues that Dick Cheney is losing his grip, probably because of his heart disease. Cottle's article is the typical mean-spirirted stuff we've come to expect from the administration's critics, marinated, however, in faux compassion.

If you read it then you have to read Charles Krauthammer's devastating reply. In fact, just read Krauthammer's essay. It's a masterwork of polemical rebuttal. If Cottle reads it she might be ashamed to ever write anything so silly again.

RLC

Retrocausality

Physicist Paul Davies, the author of many fascinating books on cosmology and the origin of life, has come up with a novel explanation for how the universe could be so exquisitely fine-tuned for life without having to invoke the dread concept of a Creator God. Davies hypothesizes that the precise calibrations of dozens of cosmic parameters were set during the Big Bang by a phenomenon called "retrocausality":

If retrocausality is real, it might even explain why life exists in the universe -- exactly why the universe is so "finely tuned" for human habitation. Some physicists search for deeper laws to explain this fine-tuning, while others say there are millions of universes, each with different laws, so one universe could quite easily have the right laws by chance and, of course, that's the one we're in.

Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University in Sydney, suggests another possibility: The universe might actually be able to fine-tune itself. If you assume the laws of physics do not reside outside the physical universe, but rather are part of it, they can only be as precise as can be calculated from the total information content of the universe. The universe's information content is limited by its size, so just after the Big Bang, while the universe was still infinitesimally small, there may have been wiggle room, or imprecision, in the laws of nature.

And room for retrocausality. If it exists, the presence of conscious observers later in history could exert an influence on those first moments, shaping the laws of physics to be favorable for life. This may seem circular: Life exists to make the universe suitable for life. If causality works both forward and backward, however, consistency between the past and the future is all that matters. "It offends our common-sense view of the world, but there's nothing to prevent causal influences from going both ways in time," Davies says. "If the conditions necessary for life are somehow written into the universe at the Big Bang, there must be some sort of two-way link."

In other words, since causality is not limited by the laws of physics to only one direction, it's theoretically possible, Davies argues, that sentient life was able to somehow reach back to the Big Bang and calibrate the forces of physics and the expansion rate of the universe and a host of other values. Billions of years later intelligent beings would arise which had the ability to retroactively create their own universe.

This sounds bizarre even for a cosmologist, suggesting as it does the notion that the universe is the creation of its own inhabitants. Davies' theory is interesting, however, for what it implies. First, it's a tacit admission by Davies that the universe is inexplicable apart from having been tinkered with by an intelligent mind, and second, it illustrates the philosophical contortions some people will put themselves through in order to avoid the conclusion that the intelligent agent responsible for the universe is God.

HT: Telic Thoughts

RLC

The Battle of Diyala

As American and Iraqi pressure mounts in Baghdad insurgents and al Qaeda fighters are fleeing the city for other refuges. One such destination is a city named Diyala, but coalition forces are not permitting them to find a haven there. Bill Roggio gives us an update on the Battle of Diyala.

RLC

Crawley and Dawkins (Pt. I)

William Crawley of the BBC conducts an excellent interview with Richard Dawkins. Anyone wishing to get an idea of what the controversy surrounding Dawkins' views is all about will find this session to be a useful introduction.

In the course of the interview Dawkins makes some interesting claims. For example, there's this one:

"Before Darwin it was very hard (intellectually) to be an atheist. After Darwin it was very hard not to be one. Darwinism makes it very hard to be a theist."

So much for efforts by those who believe that one can be both a Darwinian and a theist to find common ground with the anti-theist Darwinians. For people like Dawkins there is no common ground. One is either a complete naturalistic materialist or a superstitious ignoramus.

It should be mentioned that the word "Darwinism" isn't strictly synonomous with "evolution." Darwinism is the metaphysical belief that materialistic, natural processes and forces are adequate by themselves to account for all aspects of life. It is possible to be both a theist and an evolutionist, but I agree with Dawkins that it is very difficult to be a Darwinian evolutionist and a theist.

Dawkins then wonders:

"Why should there be a point to life? The meaning of life is whatever you make it. From a Darwinian point of view it is to propagate the species."

In other words, as long as you don't give the question of purpose too much thought you can avoid the depression and despair that seeps into the psyche when it begins to dawn on people that their lives are merely "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Dawkins seems to recognize that materialism strips life of any real meaning or purpose and leaves us to try to find some reason for getting out of bed in the morning. For Dawkins meaning comes from trying to prove there is no God, but as I think C.S. Lewis pointed out, there's something peculiar about making it one's purpose to prove that there is no purpose.

He adds that:

"It doesn't make much sense to go around and count the number of people who believe something in order to decide whether [a belief] is a delusion or not. The best thing to do is to look at the arguments for or against a belief."

Precisely. Which is why it's somewhat beside the point to insist, as so many anti-IDers do, that ID is bogus because no top scientists believe it. This is a diversion and a fallacy. What's important is not whether a majority of scientists believe something but rather the reasons why they believe it or don't beleive it. In many cases Darwinism is embraced because it is a necessary crutch to sustain a materialist metaphysics. In other words, as Dawkins has said elsewhere, Darwinism makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

In response to the extraordinary fine-tuning of the universe Dawkins offers three counter-arguments:

He first raises the question of where the designer comes from. If God designed the universe, he asks, then what designed God?

His second reply, which he conflates with the third but which is really a distinct argument, is what is called the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP). It says that we should not think it so very special that the universe is as it is for were it not, we would not be around to notice it. The fact that we exist means that the universe must be tuned as precisely as it is.

Sensing perhaps, the absurdity of the WAP he quickly imports a completely unscientific, non-empirical speculative hypothesis called the Multiverse theory. According to this, our universe is just one of an innumerable array of universes each having different parameters, values and laws. Given the existence of so many worlds it becomes more likely, even probable, that one world will be structured the way ours is.

Think of it this way: The chances that somebody is going to be holding the winning lottery ticket increase as the number of tickets sold increases. The more tickets/universes, the more likely one of them will have just the right sequence of numbers.

I'd like to consider these three arguments in another post.

RLC

Precipitous Drop in Violence

This article contains some important good news:

Brigadier Qassim Moussawi, Iraqi military spokesman, said the number of Iraqis killed by violence in Baghdad in the 30 days since Operation Enforcing the Law began was 265, down from 1,440 killed in the previous month. He said that the number of attacks in surrounding provinces had increased, although he did not provide figures.

Major General William Caldwell, US military spokesman, meanwhile said: "Murders and executions have come down by over 50 per cent [in Baghdad]."

He acknowledged there had been a slight climb in the number killed in the last seven days, but not as much as at the equivalent point in the cycle of previous Baghdad security plans. "This past week is normally the week in which the number of murders goes back to their previous levels," he said.

And this with only two of the five brigades called for by the surge tactic currently in place. Perhaps we might ask a question of those of our friends who opposed George Bush's troop increase: If the murder rate continues to decline in Baghdad or to remain at low levels, was the Presidents' tactic the right thing to do?

Perhaps congressman Murtha might like to entertain the question.

RLC

Iranian Defections

Things are getting very curious in Iran. Now come reports that yet another high ranking Iranian military officer has disappeared along with his family. Whether he has defected or whether he has been eliminated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for unknown derelictions is not known, but a lot of people in Iran, from the top on down, must be wondering whom they can trust. This whole article is fascinating, especially the last several paragraphs:

Three weeks ago the Iranian armed forces command in Teheran lost contact with a senior officer who had been serving in Iraq with the al-Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to a senior Iranian official cited in the Wednesday edition of the London-based Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat.

The Iranian source said that it is still unclear why contact with the officer, Colonel Amir Muhammad Shirazi, was lost. "It is possible that the American forces in Iraq arrested him along with a group of 13 Iranian military and intelligence officials," he said, adding that this is just one of the scenarios being investigated by Tehran.

The lack of word from the al-Quds officer is attracting heightened interest because of the mysterious disappearance - or perhaps defection - of Iran's former Deputy Defense Minister, General Ali Reza Asgari , a week ago.

An Iranian source denied reports circulating in Iran that Asgari was being held prisoner by the Americans and is being tortured. "The people investigating the affair have no new information about him. Such reports are part of a propaganda campaign intended to ... prevent other high-ranking Iranian officials who may be thinking of defecting from doing so," the source told the Iranian news agency FARS.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reported that a Tehran military court sentenced to death a colonel in Iranian military intelligence who recently returned from service in Iraq. The officer was accused of collaborating with American forces and providing them with details on the deployment and activities of the al-Quds unit and Iranian military intelligence operatives. He was also accused of providing the Americans with classified documents, photographs and maps related to Iran's nuclear program and armed forces.

The newspaper reported that over the past three years, dozens of members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and military intelligence units have defected to the American forces in Iraq.

Officers from various branches of Iran's armed forces operate in Iraq in both covert and overt roles. The United States accuses Iranian agents of aiding Shiite militias in Iraq with training, weapons and funding. Over the past few months, American forces in Iraq have arrested a number of Iranian officers.

I'd like to think that somehow the good guys are behind all these defections and disappearances and that we are reaping an intelligence bonanza from it.

HT: HotAir which has more on the story.

RLC

Coulter's Evil, Rock's Cool

According to Drudge when LIFE recently asked comic Chris Rock if America is ready for an African American president, Rock told LIFE: "It's ready for a retarded president, why wouldn't it be ready for an African American president?"

Well, now. Perhaps in liberal salons there are nuances punctiliously limned and fine distinctions carefully drawn between calling a politician a "faggot" and calling a president "retarded." Indeed, we might conclude that they must be different sorts of attributions altogether since we heard all about Ann Coulter's insensitivity and coarseness when she referred to John Edwards as a faggot, but we haven't heard a peep of liberal criticism of Chris Rock for calling George Bush retarded. Nor, of course, do we expect to.

The difference between the Coulter and Rock episodes is telling. Coulter's slur made news primarily because it is in fact so unusual to hear a highly placed conservative indulge in such unseemly rhetoric. Rock's insult, however, is not news, at least not on the left, because such rhetoric is almost de rigueur among liberals. It's so commonplace and so widely accepted that it scarcely gets noticed.

RLC